Where Were You In '82? Here Are Some Reminders

In the earliest days of the Western Queens Gazette in 1982, the newest kid on the block was doing exactly what it was expected to do- reporting the news, the local news- in Long Island City, Hunters Point, Dutch Kills, Ravenswood; Ditmars, Astoria West, Old Astoria, Steinway and Jackson Heights, according to its masthead.

The stories ranged from rallies by Long Island City and Dutch Kills residents to rid their neighborhood of streetwalking prostitutes to attempts by Paul Raimonda and the Astoria Heights Homeowners & Tenants Association to shut down a Rikers Island prison processing center in their residential community.

Sometimes the news was good. The paper ran stories about the reincarnation of the Astoria Film Studios and the start of the Silvercup Studios on 21st Street in Long Island City to give Western Queens a strong foothold in the film industry and a report that U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato had secured a $32.8 million grant to build the last three miles of subway track linking Roosevelt Island, Long Island City and Manhattan. Sometimes the paper sounded a cautionary note. Senior citizens were warned about "a trio of female con artists all over Western Queens" who were using a variety of ruses to deflect a homeowner's attention so one of the scammers could get into the house to steal whatever they could find.

Throughout these stories there were frequent mentions of local lawmakers- City Councilmember Peter Vallone Sr., state Senator Anthony Gazzara and Assemblymembers Denis Butler, Clifford Wilson, Ivan Lafayette or John Lopresto- leading or joining community groups to achieve their objectives.

Elsewhere around the country, Ronald Reagan was in the second year of his presidency and having a difficult time with a flat economy and unemployment reaching record levels.

But the former actor, reprising the gutsy character known as "the gipper", persevered. By the end of his eight-year reign (two four-year terms) would have engineered a plan which brought world peace and prevented a nuclear war on his watch.

Some of the good news in 1982 was the price of gasoline for usually harried motorists- 91 cents a gallon. A gallon of milk cost only $2.19, a bargain compared to what we now pay for a quart.

Also, according to a booklet entitled "Pages of Time," average income was $21,000 a year. You could buy a house for $82,500 or a new car for about $8,000.

In Washington, D.C., political punsters were speculating that a relatively new congressmember, Geraldine Ferraro, a former school teacher and resident of Astoria, was getting some mention of getting a spot on the Democrats' national ticket in 1984.

Up in Albany, Governor Hugh Carey was ending his second term as governor and was passing the baton to his Lieutenant Governor, Mario Cuomo, a Queens attorney of some note, who at the time was campaigning to succeed Carey. In 1983, he would do just that.

Cuomo had achieved prominence by saving 69 Corona homes from the wrecking ball about a decade earlier when the John V. Lindsay mayoral administration had wanted to condemn them to create a site for a high school football field.

After several years of pursuing a career in public office; 1982 was a defining year for the Holliswood homeowner, as he was about to reach the governor's mansion in Albany.

The Gazette, as part of this anniversary issue, has chronicled the gubernatorial careers of New York state Governors Carey, Cuomo and George Pataki and they appear elsewhere in this edition.

In another story during the Gazette's inaugural year, in the July 20- 26 issue to be exact, Councilmember Vallone, another Queens public official, was just steps away from making an historic move in both his career and the city's history.

However, in the summer of 1982, Vallone was in the midst of a battle to clear up the "Triborough Bridge Toll Crisis", as the headline aptly described it.

Vallone's ire was aroused by the fallout which resulted when bridge authorities increased tolls on the Queens- Manhattan- Bronx span from $1 to $1.25.

Long lines of cars resulted and exhaust fouled the air more than usual, as toll-takers frequently had to make change for drivers who did not have the exact amount for the toll.

A frustrated Vallone complained to the bridge authorities of "the suffering and inconvenience caused... to the already harrassed and harried New York motorist, and to submit to you concrete and workable suggestions to alleviate this intolerable situation".

Unfortunately, the bridge authorities never followed Vallone's suggestions, which called for tolltakers to have pre-packaged amounts of change to speed drivers on their way.

However, the battle of the bridge was one factor in Vallone's being chosen less than a year later as City Council Majority Leader, a powerful political position, from which he was later elevated to the historic, newly created office of City Council Speaker.

Vallone held the two offices as the City Council leader for about two decades. The powers invested in the Speaker placed that office in some respects on a par with the mayor of the city of New York and Vallone used them strategically to establish the council as a true partner with the mayor in running the city government. Several times, the Vallone-led Council passed what eventually became the official multi-billion-dollar city budget.

Returning to the nation's capital in 1982, despite having his administration ravaged by a sluggish economy and high unemployment, the national defense-oriented president launched an effort on May 9 that would eventually end the Cold War with Russia and stave off a nuclear war.

On that day, he called upon Russia to join with the United States to begin Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, otherwise known as START. The talks were aimed at Reagan's plan to reduce the nuclear warheads of each of the world's most powerful nations by a third.

According to the Congressional Quarterly, the START negotiations started in Geneva on June 29. They would end successfully after Reagan's second term concluded in 1998 and he was succeeded the next year by George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan's vice president.

Some time later, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed, and still later in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, definitively ending the Cold War.

To many, this was the greatest accomplishment of the president who came to be known as the Great Communicator. He died in 2004 at the age of 93 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Despite Reagan's success in starting this nation and Russia on the road to ending the Cold War, during most of 1982 he was beset by serious problems with the economy, high unemployment and labor unrest. To cap the year off, the Democrats won control of the House in the November elections, boosting the party's hopes of winning the 1984 presidential election.

Events that would make that election historic began to stir in 1982 as Congressmember Geraldine Ferraro began to contemplate running for vice president on the Democratic ticket two years in the future.

Besides making her the first woman ever to run for vice president on a major party ticket, Ferraro's nomination would also have tremendous political possibilities: creating a major opportunity to grab the women's and Italian-American vote, generate huge press coverage and, if her ticket won the presidency in the future, set her up to be the first woman candidate for president.

But that's getting ahead of our story.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an attractive 43- year-old mother of three when she suddenly burst on the Queens political scene in 1978 to snatch a rarely available congressional seat from the powerful county Democratic Party organization.

Ferraro, who lived in Astoria for a time and taught in a school in that neighborhood for several years in the late 1950s, had earned a law degree at Fordham in 1960. That year, she married John Zaccaro, also an attorney.

While raising their three children, she became active in local political clubs and did some parttime lawyering. She finally accepted a full-time job in 1974 in the Queens District Attorney's office, headed at the time by a cousin, DA Nicholas Ferraro, now deceased.

Working diligently on matters involving senior citizens and domestic violence cases, she helped to form the DA's special victims bureau and was later placed in charge of it.

Toward the late 1970s, James Delaney, who had represented Western Queens in Congress for about 30 years, announced he would retire after serving about 30 years in Congress.

His son, Patrick, an investment banker, had an interest in succeeding his father, but dropped out of the running when then Councilmember Thomas Manton of Woodside was selected by the Queens Democratic organization, headed by Donald R. Manes, (also Queens Borough President).

Also throwing her hat in the ring was Ferraro.

Manton was heavily favored to win, but Ferraro, with a well-funded and energetic campaign, caught the voters' attention and defeated Manton in the primary to win the nomination.

Ferraro's opponent in the general election was Assemblymember Alfred Delli Bovi of Richmond Hill. Besides being better known to the electorate because of his years in the Assembly, Delli Bovi was the favorite in the race because Republicans had added GOP voting strength to the 9th Congressional District in the last reapportionment done before the 1978 balloting.

Despite this, Ferraro upset the odds, defeated Delli Bovi handily and became the new Congressmember from Western Queens.

By the time 1982 arrived, Ferraro had moved more rapidly than had been expected in the House Democratic majority. The powerful Speaker, Congressmember Thomas (Tip) O'Neill, had taken a liking to the diligent, pro labor, team player.

Although Ferraro took many pro-woman positions, she was low-key, in contrast to two other prominent female lawmakers, Bella Abzug and

Shirley Chisholm. As a result, in the 1980 Congresses, O'Neill backed her to be the Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, and in 1980 and 1982 gave her a seat on the House Steering and Policy Committee. In 1981, she was also appointed to a commission which was writing the delegate selection rules for the 1984 Democratic Party presidential convention.

(Ferraro was also appointed to another high profile Democratic majority position, the Budget Committee, in 1983. But the best appointment of all was as chairperson of the Democratic Platform Committee. She was the first woman to hold that prominent job.

The Current Biography Yearbook (1984 Edition), from which much of the foregoing biographical information came, indicates that when the well-received platform that was devised under Ferraro's guidance was approved, "Ferraro emerged as an even brighter star".

By mid-1983, there was even more talk of her vice presidential nomination possibilities and it appeared she wanted the nod. When the presidential campaign started to heat up in 1984, Walter Mondale, the Democratic frontrunner, had reportedly boiled down his running mate selection to Diane Feinstein, then mayor of San Francisco, now a U.S. Senator, and Ferraro.

On July 12, four months before the election, Mondale announced he had chosen Ferraro to be his running mate and Ferraro had accepted.

From that point, the Cinderella story ended ingloriously, the bubble burst.

The Mondale-Ferraro ticket just couldn't get its campaign off the ground. Despite Reagan's age, he was more jovial and relaxed than his opponent on the campaign trail, appeared more confident. At the same time, some disclosures of Ferraro's personal finances kept the campaign in what seemed a permanent stall.

The election results were overwhelmingly for Reagan/Bush. Reagan took every state, except Mondale's home state of Minnesota, and 525 of 538 electoral votes.

Ferraro, out of office, became a regular on a political talk show for a time, and twice unsuccessfully ran for the Senate. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer in 1998 but, happily, survived.

Elsewhere in this story highlighting the past 25 years, we have indicated who the elected public officials were at the time, as well as the members who served on school boards and community boards. Sadly, many of them have passed away. These include Manes, Congressmembers Joseph Addabbo and Benjamin Rosenthal and Senator Moynihan. Rosenthal was succeeded by Gary Ackerman.

Senator D'Amato lost his seat to Charles Schumer, but the former Republican powerhouse operates a successful consultant's business and is still active and influential in Republican Party politics.

Among the state senators listed, Anthony Gazzara left his legislative post to accept an appointment as State Liquor Authority chairman from Governor Cuomo. Gazzara left that job to become a judge and has since retired.

The Gazzara seat was filled by state Senator George Onorato in a special election in 1983.

The Assembly list is notable because the four Republicans listed- John Esposito, Douglas N. Prescott, John Flack and John Lopresto- either quit the job or were defeated in a re-election attempt, like Prescott, who was defeated and replaced by Assemblymember Ann Margaret Carrozza, of Bayside. This left the Assembly an all- Democrat bastion.

Among those on the 1982 list, only Assemblymembers Anthony Seminerio and Ivan Lafayette are still serving.

Alan Hevesi went on to become first city then state comptroller. He resigned from the state comptroller position under fire last year.

Butler resigned several years ago and was succeeded by Assemblymember Michael Gianaris.

Leonard Stavisky and Judge Frederick D. Schmidt have both died. From the City Council list, Peter Vallone Sr. left office under the term limits rule, as did Archie Spigner, Morton Povman and Sheldon Leffler. Thomas Manton died last year.